Review/Music; Plumbing the Soul of Jazz

By JON PARELES

Published: August 4, 1993

Ray Charles's genius is inseparable from his quirks. He'll attack a song on every side, changing tempo, harmony, phrasing, even some lyrics; he transform smooth lines into choppy syncopations and wide leaps, his voice cracking or rasping in unlikely places. No category is safe from his transformations; he'll speed up a ballad, turn a show tune into gospel music, remake country songs as soul shouts. He can shred a song, turning it into a simple display of willfulness. But more often, his whims get to the heart of a song, tearing away unneccesary prettiness and craft to find humor, pain, longing or defiance.

At Radio City Music Hall on Friday night, the 62-year-old Mr. Charles emphasized his jazz roots. He was backed by a 17-man big band, which bustled ineffectually in its own showpiece but settled back to fill out the arrangements when Mr. Charles appeared, from riffing blues to cushiony chords on ballads.

Mr. Charles's set, including many warhorses he has been singing for decades, was about losing and finding both home and love, about leaving and wishing he could return. With a slide into falsetto or a breaking note or a grainy tone on just the right word, he made even his most familiar material affecting: "Georgia on My Mind" was filled with nostalgic longing, and "I Can't Stop Loving You" was almost despondent.

He started "Some Enchanted Evening" with shtick, rolling his r's theatrically, but then carried it toward gospel music as he urged, "Never let her go." A version of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," which appears on his current album, "My World" (Warner Brothers), moved from cranky reminiscence to a kind of affirmation. The backup singers, the Raelettes, offered a mini-drama to close the set. They rejected Mr. Charles's male character with "Hit the Road, Jack," watched his suffering in "I Can't Stop Loving You," then reunited ecstatically with him in "What'd I Say."

The set had some cheesy aspects. The main one was that Mr. Charles played an electric keyboard. It allowed him to use vibraphone, electric-piano and synthesizer sounds, including squiggly notes delivered with lascivious glee. But the keyboard was only intermittently audible, and its piano tone was shallow; if the opening act, Darlene Love, could use both electric keyboard and a real piano, so could the headliner. Mr. Charles was also hampered by a mediocre sound mix, sometimes muffled, sometimes shrill, with a hum in his vocal microphone that made him complain to the audience.

But Mr. Charles regularly transcended his show's impediments. While a few songs were lost to eccentricities, most of the set was simultaneously jocular and heartfelt, a tribute to American songwriting and to the transforming power of a great singer.